I remember that I posted this video after the jump on the Michael Moore piece that I ran Saturday morning. It was only two days ago so yeah, I do recall doing this. Here’s to those reactionaries who’ll be voting for the corporation-kowtowing crazies on Tuesday.
This is what Vince Vaughn does better than anyone else in the world. He’s a marvel at hyper guy-talk humor, but since The Wedding Crashers he hasn’t done it enough, certainly not at this particular level. Notice how much leaner he was five years ago compared to his appearance in the trailers for The Dilemma.
Oscar Poker #6 contains a little bit of box-office with Phil Contrino, a discussion of why certain Best Picture winners have prevailed, a fairly detailed explanation of what Morning Glory is and why it works as well as it does, and reflections about the passing of George Hickenlooper and the fate the upcoming Casino Jack — his last film. (The recording abruptly stops at the end, but that’ll be fixed.) The podcast is also sitting in its usual iTunes berth.
Yesterday’s N.Y. Times included a profile of Morning Glory star Rachel McAdams by ex-People critic Leah Rozen. The headline says “An Actress On The Brink of a Blockbuster.” Right away you’re thinking, “Wait…the Times is suggesting that Morning Glory will be a blockbuster?” Because Rozen’s story doesn’t even hint at that possibility. Not even in a roundabout game-of-chance sense.
Rozen reports that McAdams is a sincerely admired, greatly talented and versatile actress. And that Morning Glory is “a comedy,” even though it’s more of a spirited, occasionally amusing fast-lane survival story. The “hah-hah, that’s really funny” moments happen, but not all that frequently. Which is fine. It doesn’t need to be a “comedy.” I was surprised and pleased after seeing it last Thursday morning. It’s a first-rate, highly intelligent mainstream confection.
Rozen explains that Morning Glory is about “a hotshot television producer who must rein in bickering anchors, played by Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford, while trying to increase ratings on a struggling morning news show.” This isn’t quite right either. It’s not so much that Keaton and Ford are “bickering”, but that McAdams and Ford are at loggerheads. McAdams has arm-twisted Ford, a Dan Rather-ish TV newsman, into co-hosting her morning show, and he’s repelled by the show’s cotton-candy countenance and won’t play ball and make with the amiable banter despite the fact that McAdams’ job and the continuance of the show hang in the balance.
Rozen also reports that McAdams is admired by director Roger Michell and by her costars Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum, and by critics like the Chicago Tribune‘s Michael Phillips. But the article doesn’t contain the slightest hint of approval or a qualitative assessment, even, for Morning Glory itself. So what blockbuster, exactly, is McAdams on the brink of?
“What McAdams is still missing is the breakout hit that will do for her what Pretty Woman did for Julia Roberts in 1990,” Rozen writes. Okay, then why run with a headline that says McAdams is, in fact, on the brink of this kind of success? What does the Times know that we don’t?
At the end of the piece Woody Allen, who’s directed McAdams in the forthcoming Midnight in Paris, says that “she’s going to make a fortune in this business, because there aren’t a lot of girls out there with that much sex appeal and beauty who can also be comic.” So McAdams is destined to be very wealthy — fine. But that’s not quite the same thing as being “on the brink of a blockbuster.”
McAdams is currently shooting (or is just about to shoot) Terrence Malick‘s super-secretive new film, which is being shot near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, with costar Ben Affleck. But Malick doesn’t make (and never will make) blockbusters so that’s obviously not the allusion either.
If anyone can figure this out, please get back to me.
I never put on Halloween costumes, but these husky contacts are so cool I might buy a pair next year just for the fun of it. They were purchased at Abracadabra on West 21st Street for $99 and change. And they have all kinds of weird-looking ones, I’m told. Cat eyes, serpent eyes, Terminator eyes, etc.
Every year I trot out the old saw about values and lessons being the main determining factor in the choosing of Best Picture winners by Academy voters. People recognize strong stories, first-rate artsy elements and high-level craft, but more often than not the tipping factor is a film “saying” something that the Academy recognizes as fundamentally true and close-to-home — a movie that reflects their lives and values in a way that feels agreeable.
Ordinary People beat Raging Bull because the values espoused by the former (suppressing trauma is bad, letting it out is good, wicked-witch moms are bad) touched people more deeply than the ones in Raging Bull. What values did Martin Scorsese‘s film espouse? Art-film values. Great goombah acting values. Black-and-white cinematography values. The only value that resulted in a big Oscar was Robert De Niro‘s commitment to realistic performing values — i.e. putting on 50 or 60 pounds to play fat Jake LaMotta. But there were no values in the film at all. What, it’s a bad thing to beat up your brother in front of his wife and kids?
American Beauty won the Best Picture Oscar because it said something that everyone (particularly workaholic careerists) believes to be true, which is that we spend so much time and energy running around in circles that we fail to appreciate the simple beauty of things.
Casablanca won because it said the right things about nobility and selflessness just as the U.S. was about to enter World War II. And because it was very well made and performed and had obvious romantic appeal, etc.
Gone With The Wind won in part because it presented the Civil War trials of Scarlett O’Hara as a metaphor for what the U.S. had gone through during the Great Depression, and said that if you don’t have gumption life will run you over and trample you down.
I’m not saying each and every Best Picture winner has won because of the values factor, but it does seem to explain the triumph of Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas (respecting and understanding other cultures and creeds is a spiritually nourishing thing vs. life in the Queens mob in the ’60s and ’70s was volatile and tacky and bloody). And Crash‘s victory over Brokeback Mountain (a values rebellion due to the over-70 Tony Curtis contingent being unable to stomach the idea of the iconic American cowboy figure being messed with). And Kramer vs. Kramer beating Apocalypse Now (learning to be a good dad vs. “the horror” in a psychedelic Vietnam).
So what values are espoused by this year’s Best Picture contenders?
The Social Network doesn’t espouse as much as observe and frame a particular social world that’s evolved over the last six or seven years. It says that (a) geniuses aren’t very good with the social graces and that they also have trouble with loyalty if it gets in the way of a better business plan, and (b) what this particular genius wanted all along was a Rosebud-y girl who dumped him.
The King’s Speech says the nobody is so high and mighty that they can’t be helped by a good tutor who talks plain and straight and can cut through the pretense and the bullshit.
127 Hours says that arrogance and thoughtlessness invites tragedy, and that survival is a duty that must be obeyed, even if it means a huge sacrifice. The glories of life are worth what whatever it takes to simply stay alive.
Black Swan says that the performing life is tough and that self-doubt can metastasize like a cancer if you don’t face it.
What does Inception say? The Kids Are All Right? Another Year? The Way Back? Blue Valentine?
I stood near the Sanity Rally stage with my leather computer bag slung over my shoulder for about five, five and a half hours. Standing, standing, standing. I just got hungry and tired and decided to shine it before Jon Stewart delivered his wrap-up speech. I finally listened to it this morning. Not bad.
The trailer for John Landis‘s Burke and Hare, a fact-based black comedy about a pair of early 19th murderers (Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis) who provided cadavers for cash for medical study in Edinburgh, tells you it’s been handsomely designed and shot. But critical reaction has been mixed since opening in the U.K. two days ago. Some felt it was funny (like TimeOut‘s Tom Huddleston) and some didn’t.
Variety‘s Charles Gant wrote on 10.26 that the “creaky comedy about 19th-century corpse retailers Burke and Hare, which reps an attempt by Fragile Films to match the tone and content of such beloved Ealing classics as The Ladykillers, should rattle some funny bones in native Blighty, but may face B.O. graveyards abroad.”
EdinburghGuide.com has posted a summary of reviews, and concludes that the verdict “is a resounding thumbs-down.
“Yes, there are historical inaccuracies — hardly surprising given that the true story of Burke and Hare is of grisly serial murders. And the Scottish accents are iffy. But the main complaint, in a spate of one star and two star reviews, is that Landis’s Burke and Hare is simply not funny enough.
“Where the script stumbles,” says Gant, “is in its absence of any especially funny setpieces or memorable lines. Instead, the scribes seem to think a general tone of wry amusement will suffice, with some slapstick thrown in for good measure.
The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw concurs in his brief, two-star review, saying that B&H “just isn’t as funny as it needs to be.” And Hollywood Reporter critic Ray Bennett dismissed it as “witless drivel.”
Burke and Hare is Landis’s first film since Susan’s Plan (’98).
I can’t avoid stating the obvious about Pegg, which is that his head has inflated into the size and shape of a basketball. He needs to cut down on the lagers and the sausage and invest in a treadmill.
‘See, you’ve got three faces. Your first face is the one you’re born with, the one in the mirror every morning. Your second face is the one you develop thanks to ego, ingenuity and sensitivity, the one people identify as you. And then there’s your third face. No one ever gets to see that one. It’ll never show up in any mirror nor be visible to the eyes of parents, lovers, or friends. It’s the face no one knows but you. It’s the real you. Always privy to your deepest fears, hopes and desires, your third face can’t lie or be lied to. I call it my mind mistress, guardian of my secret utopias, bitter disappointments, and noble visions.” — quote attributed to director Sam Fuller (and passed along last year by Steven Gaydos).
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